Down To Earth

Editorial. Sunita Narain.
Aug. VIII. XIV

How smart is a smart
city

by Sunita
Narain

Smart is as smart
does. The NDA government’s proposal to build
100 “smart” cities will work only if
it can reinvent the very idea of urban growth in a
country like India. Smart thinking will require
the government to not only copy the model cities
of the already developed Western world, but also
find a new measure of liveability that will work
for Indian situation, where the cost of growth is
unaffordable for most.

The advantage is that
there is no agreed definition of smart city. Very
loosely it is seen as a settlement where
technology is used to bring about efficiency in
resource use and improvement in the level of
services. All this is needed. But before we can
bring in smart technology, we need to know what to
do with it. How do we build new cities and repair
groaning urban settlements to provide clean water
to all, to manage the growing mountains of
garbage, to treat sewage before we destroy our
rivers and to do something as basic as breathing
without inhaling toxins?

It can be done. But only
if we have our own dream of a modern Indian city.
We cannot turn Ghaziabad, Rajkot, Sholapur, Tumkur
or even Gurgaon into Shanghai or Singapore. But we
can turn these cities into liveable models for
others to emulate.

Take water, sewage,
mobility or air pollution. The current model of
resource management, developed in rich Western
cities, is costly. It cannot be afforded by all.
Even these cities cannot rebuild the paraphernalia
for providing services to their people. This
system was built years ago, when the city had
funds and grew gradually with recurring, high
investment. Even if we were to build greenfield
cities, we cannot wish for such investment. We
need a new approach to humane urban
growth.

The first principle in
this is to accept that we have to renew what
already exists. Take water, for example. Our
cities have been built to optimise on the
available resources. They were smart in building
lakes and ponds to harvest every drop of rain.
This ensured that the city recharged its water
table and did not face floods every time it
rained. We need to revive that system. It may not
be adequate to meet the growing needs of the city,
but will cut costs by reducing the length of the
pipeline and bring down distribution losses. Once
we do this, we should add the smartest technology
for measuring supply and for reducing demand.
Flush toilets are antiquated. We need smart
appliances to conserve water and smart ways to
recycle it.

This then is the next
agenda. We know our cities do not have underground
sewerage to speak of. A very un-smart thing to do
would be to fall into the trap of civil engineers
to build sewerage network. Delhi, which has the
highest network of sewerage lines (some 5,000 km),
needs to build another 10,000 km to meet the need
of its current population. Now, knowing that the
existing network, built over a century, is already
clogged and broken, the task is
impossible.

We know our cities used
septic tanks or open drains for sewage management.
So instead of burying these drains, the aim should
be to treat sewage in these channels and to reuse
the recycled water. Use the trajectory of the
mobile phone; build future solutions by skipping
the landline.

We can do this in the
case of energy as well. Today, our cities are
pampered by subsidy because energy cost is high
and supply is squeezed. Why can’t we build a
new grid for the city based on solar rooftop
generation and super energy-efficient
appliances?

This should also be the
approach for designing mobility. Our cities have
been built to be car-free. We are now desperately
shoving, pushing and parking vehicles down the
narrow lanes. Think smart. Change the idea of
mobility itself—build for walking, cycling,
bus and metro.